Returning Home: The Pathway to Stability - Miss Shelia’s Story

When Sheila Clark first moved into the apartment she rented for over fifteen years, it was a complex with residents who were mostly “quiet working-class families.” Unfortunately, she witnessed the neighborhood change from being a peaceful community to one being noisy with loiters.

 Sheila longed for a home to call her own. She wanted a place with a yard for her children to play in a safe, quieter environment.  She hoped for a house that would better accommodate her large, extended family and most of all, something that she could call her own.

 Although Sheila's 23 years of employment with Marine Corps Community Services (MCCS) was stable, buying a house meant finding one she could afford. As a single mother of three, she faced the challenge of saving for a down payment, while supporting a family and finding a home in a skyrocketing real estate market. Discovering Habitat was an answered prayer for Sheila. Habitat’s unique building model of bringing families together with volunteers to build homes and providing a no interest mortgage made buying a home affordable. 

 Sheila grew up in a house on land passed down to her family from her mother’s grandmother.  She understood the financial value and peace of mind that homeownership affords. Her family homestead, the land Sheila built on when she partnered with Habitat, had been owned by her family for more than 300 years.

 Before being able to build, Sheila had to get her family’s land out of heirs’ property status- a land holding status in many states, especially the South, where multiple members of a family own land jointly. After getting half an acre of the property titled in her name, the building process began. The construction of Sheila’s home was a collaborative effort that modeled the heart of the Habitat for Humanity culture of volunteerism and the usage of sweat equity.

 Twenty years later standing in the front yard of her home, Sheila beams with pride of a homeowner who has experienced the blessings. Today, her mortgage has been paid and her children are grown up with homes of their own. Her house is the home where grandchildren drop in daily and her family gathers to celebrate holidays, birthdays, and the comfort of one another’s presence.  

 “There’s nothing like having your own home,” Shelia says and pauses as if she remembers something. Then adds, “Habitat for Humanity, my community at large, God and my ancestors all had a part in this.”